Guides
Part of Real paper collection surveys teach lessons private collectors miss
Recording a paper collection: a small project done properly
Setting up a record of your own collection that lasts: the practical setup for documenting a paper and pen collection, what to photograph, what to record.
A collection with no record is a pile. The setup below takes an afternoon, costs almost nothing, and produces something you can hand to somebody else. It is deliberately low technology, because a record that depends on an app you stop paying for is not a record.
What to take away
- One numbered list, one photograph per item, one folder. That is the whole system.
- Photograph pairs, not single items, when you want to show a difference.
- Keep the capture information with the images, not in your head.
- Number the objects physically, or their photographs become unmatchable.
The setup
Element / What it is
- A numbered list
- One line per item, in a bound notebook · A notebook
- A photograph per item
- Same background, same distance, same light · Nothing
- A folder per year
- Photographs named by item number and date · Nothing
- Physical numbers
- Pencil on an enclosure, never on the object · A pencil
- A capture note
- Camera, light, distance, date · One page
Bound notebook rather than loose sheets, because loose sheets separate from the collection within a year.
The five-part record setup
- Numbered list in a bound notebook
- One photograph per item, same setup
- Folder per year, files named by number
- Pencil number on enclosure, never object
- One-page capture notecamera, light, date
Photograph in pairs when condition is the point
The most informative photographs in condition work show two things at once. The University of Iowa study's same book, different papers images each show one book with two specimens from inside it, one in better and one in poorer condition, drawn from a subset where different paper conditions were found within a single volume.
Copy that directly. When you photograph a notebook that has yellowed unevenly, get both states in one frame with something for scale. A single photograph of the bad half proves nothing, because there is no baseline in the shot.
Keep the technical details with the file
Records fail when the context is separated from the object. Institutions solve it by embedding the details inside the file itself. FADGI's guidance on embedded metadata sets out what technical and descriptive information belongs inside a digital file so that later users know what they are looking at.
You do not need to write metadata. You need file names that carry the item number and the date, and a single text file in the folder that says what camera, what light and what distance you used. Both of those survive a change of computer.
Keep it dull and finishable
The failure mode of collection records is ambition. A system with fifteen fields and a taxonomy of condition terms gets abandoned in week two, and an abandoned record is worse than none because you will trust the half of it that exists. Five fields, one photograph, one folder. Add complexity only when the simple version has survived a year.
The afternoon
- Lay everything out and give each item a number.
- Write the numbered list in the notebook, one line each.
- Photograph each item against the same background at the same distance.
- Name the files by number and date.
- Write the capture note and put it in the folder.
Then stop. The temptation is to start describing everything in detail, which turns a two-hour job into a project you abandon. The survey approach this supports is in what documented collections teach, and the plan the record eventually informs is in planning a collection.
